As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Could They Get Any More Ridiculous?

The Urinal of 9-11 Stundies publishes the most breathtakingly fatheaded "peer-reviewed" letter that I can recall seeing over there since the "Flying Elephant" paper back in their initial edition, which was eventually rescinded (heckuva a job you're doing there, Jonesy!).

The author, who shows at least one working synapse by declining to be identified, goes through a fairly trivial set of calculations to estimate how much jet fuel remained inside the buildings and on the impacted floors (i.e., excluding the fireballs outside the building and the amount that flowed down through the vertical penetrations (elevator shafts and stairwells), based on NIST's own estimates. He comes to the conclusion that roughly 3500 gallons remained on the impacted floors in the North Tower and 3,000 gallons in the South Tower.

Then, ludicrously, he presents some visual aids to show us the amount of room that jet fuel would take up. Why, that would only fill a standard office cubicle to 9 feet high, or a small backyard pool, or a U-Haul truck! Obviously that tiny amount of fuel could not possibly have brought down the towers!

Piling hilarity on hilarity, he then visually shows the relative size of each tower to a cubicle, a U-Haul truck and a swimming pool. Now it's tempting to point out that it's unfair to compare the fluid that remained on roughly 6-8 floors of each tower to the entire tower, but even if he'd compared the jet fuel volume to only those 6-8 floors, it would be an asinine comparison. Why? Think about a large house and a tiny match. Clearly by the "logic" used by the anonymous writer, that tiny match could not possibly destroy that large house.

It's not the jet fuel, it's what gets ignited by the jet fuel. It's not the match, it's what gets ignited by the match. Un-freaking-believable!

Update: Here's a challenge for Dr Jones. We know that the 8 stories of the North Tower that were impacted by Flight 11 contained approximately 350,000 square feet of area. Divided by 3500 gallons, gives us a ratio of 100 square feet per gallon. Let's assume that Dr Jones' home is, oh, say 2500 square feet. What I propose is that he pour out 25 gallons (one gallon per 100 square feet) of kerosene (virtually the equivalent of jet fuel) in his house and light it on fire and let it burn for an hour and 45 minutes. If his house is still standing at the end of that time, I will concede the point.